What is the Telstra AFL Draft?

First held in 1986, the AFL's national draft is the main way clubs add players to their lists, alongside the trade period and free agency.

The bulk of the players picked up in the national draft are school leavers who have or will turn 18 this year, who are ready for their first shot at the big time. But any player 18 years or older can nominate for the draft, meaning some players nominate multiple years in a row before finally being drafted.

DRAFT HUB Click here for the latest draft news

When is it?

This year's national draft will be held over two nights on Thursday, November 19 and Friday, November 20, with the rookie draft and pre-season draft (more on them later) to be held the following Monday, November 23. The first night of the national draft will be an in-person live event at Marvel Stadium.

How can I watch?

The 2026 Telstra AFL Draft will be broadcast live on Fox Footy on Kayo from 7pm AEDT on Thursday, November 19 and Friday, November 20.

You can also watch AFL.com.au and the AFL Live Official App's Draft Night Live show from 7pm AEDT on both nights for the best reaction and analysis from our experts, Cal Twomey and Riley Beveridge, as the picks come in.

The draft order

In basic terms, the draft order is determined by reverse ladder position. The team at the bottom of the ladder - which this year was Essendon - gets the No.1 pick, the second-last team gets the No.2 pick, and so on. Once each club has had one pick - theoretically after 18 picks - it all starts again, with the bottom-placed team picking again.

Each block of 18 picks is called a 'round', which is where terms like 'first-round pick' and 'second-round pick' come from. The rounds continue until clubs no longer want to draft players, or run out picks.

DRAFT ORDER Click here for the full draft order

However, the final draft order doesn't quite reflect reverse ladder position and can change quite significantly based on compensation picks, bids matched on Academy players and deals done both in the trade period and on draft night - more on all of these later - so it ends up looking quite different. You can check out the final draft order for this year here.

Rounds of the draft, particularly the first round, also end up being much longer than 18 picks due to a number of factors ...

Free agency compensation picks

In 2012, the AFL introduced free agency, which is a way for players to move clubs without having to be traded. If a club loses a free agent to another club, they don't receive anything back in a trade. But that club is entitled to a free agency compensation pick in that year's draft, which is determined by the AFL. You can read more about free agency and the compensation method here.

When a compensation pick is awarded, the picks after it all move back one spot. For example, Gold Coast received pick 8 in this year's draft as compensation for losing Ben King to Hawthorn. It meant Greater Western Sydney's pick 8 has become pick 9, and so on.

In 2026, there were seven free agency compensation picks that pushed back every other pick in the draft order after moves by Zak Butters, King, Toby Greene, Jordon Butts, Joel Amartey, Lachie Neale and Kieren Briggs.

Making/matching a bid

The other factor that extends the length of rounds in the draft is when clubs match bids on father-son, Northern Academy and Next Generation Academy (NGA) players. You can read more on the father-son rule here and the NGA and Northern Academy rule here.

When it is a club's turn to pick on draft night, they are able to select any player available, even those tied to a rival club via the father-son or Academy rules. This is known as 'making a bid'. Once a bid is made on a player who is tied to another club via father-son or Academy rules, the club with that priority access must decide whether to 'match the bid'.

To match a bid, a club must give up draft picks that are of the equivalent value to the pick of the club that made the bid. Every pick in the draft is allocated a points value through the Draft Value Index (DVI), which you can see at the bottom of the page here. Under the current DVI, pick No.1 is worth 3000 points and it goes all the way down to pick 54, which is worth 14 points (every pick after that is worth nothing).

There have been significant changes to the bidding system in 2026, which are outlined here, with practical examples.

Another change this year is the introduction of a compensation pick for clubs who have a top-five pick pushed down the order due to a matched bid. You can read more on that here.

Next Generation Academy changes

The NGA bidding system was changed in 2024 to allow clubs to match bids on NGA players at any stage of the draft. 

Under the previous rule, clubs were only able to match a bid on an NGA player if the bid came outside the top 40 selections. If a bid came inside the top 40, clubs were not able to match the bid.

Read about NGAs, the northern academies and more here.

Draft Value Index changes

This is the second year of the AFL's revamped Draft Value Index system, where points are attached to only the first 54 picks (down from the previous system of the first 73 picks) and more than 10,000 points have been shaved off the value of the DVI across the board.

In addition to the new bidding rules mentioned above, this has been done so clubs have to give up much more in order to match bids. Clubs are now not able to match by stocking up on middle-range draft picks, with the AFL keener for them to have to pay a fairer price for father-son and Academy players. It will also make it far more difficult to match multiple bids on players in the same draft as they can only match with two picks.

There has also been a recent change to the deficit limit for clubs matching bids on father-son and Academy players. Under the old bidding system in place in 2024, clubs had a points deficit limit at 1723 points, meaning they could only go that far into deficit to match bids. Any further and they would not be allowed to match a bid on a draftee.

The max deficit in 2026 is 412 points.

Why are there three drafts?

Three days, three different drafts - the national, the pre-season and the rookie. So what's the difference?

Broadly for players, there's little difference when and how they get drafted. The different drafts are mainly for clubs as they navigate complex rules surrounding the salary cap and list sizes to build their squad for the upcoming season.

The majority of new players will be picked up in the national draft, with AFL.com.au's Cal Twomey reporting last week around 65 picks are expected to be used.

The rookie draft

The rookie draft, held after the national draft finishes, is a much shorter affair, with just 15 players taken last year.

Players taken here are added to a club's rookie list, rather than the senior list. The main difference here is the rookie player's base salary of $100,000 is not included in the club's salary cap. If a rookie-listed player is paid more than the base, the extra money is included in the cap.

It used to be that rookie-listed players had to be upgraded to the senior list in order to play at AFL level. But that is no longer the case, so being on the rookie list doesn't make much of a difference for the player.

Clubs have recently used the rookie draft to 're-draft' players they have recently delisted. Under AFL rules, clubs must have at least three list senior list vacancies in order to take part in the national draft. Before the national draft, clubs will delist a player to open up a senior list spot, but commit to re-drafting that player in the rookie draft. This year, clubs have delisted a total of eight players and committed to taking them in the rookie draft.

Other players taken in the rookie draft are primarily those who were overlooked in the national draft. During the national draft, you may hear about a club opting to wait for the rookie draft to pick up a player, rather than using up a primary list spot on them at the national draft.

The draft order for the rookie draft is reverse ladder position. It is not possible to trade and swap rookie draft picks.

The pre-season draft

First held in 1989, the pre-season draft (PSD) has diminished in importance to the point it is often not held at all. Six of the past 11 pre-season drafts have not been conducted, with clubs showing no interest in taking any players. Only one player was taken in last year's pre-season draft, with Callum Ah Chee landing at Adelaide after his move from Brisbane failed to materialise in the trade period.

The PSD was introduced as a way for uncontracted and delisted players to be drafted to a club they want to go to. But the introduction of free agency in 2012 has made the PSD all but redundant in an era when delisted players can move to a new home of their choice.

The PSD is often referenced during the trade period when trade negotiations for an uncontracted player reach an impasse. If a trade can't be struck, the player can instead fall out of contract and be picked up in the PSD, as was the case with Ah Chee last year.

Live trading

Since 2018, clubs have been able to trade picks amongst themselves on draft night. Clubs have different needs at the draft so as the night progresses, some may be satisfied with what they have, while others might want more picks to get the players they want.

Clubs can secure themselves more high picks, or look to do a deal to get more future picks if they believe the draft group the next year suits their needs better.

It involves a lot of pre-planning but also happens in real time; if a player a club wants is taken by a rival on the night, that club might look to cash in for 12 months later by doing a trade involving future picks.

Future trading

As is the case in the trade period, clubs can trade picks in this year's draft as well as the next two drafts (2027 and 2028). These picks for drafts one and two years away are known as future picks.

Because draft picks are tied to ladder position, we don't yet know what each club's picks in future drafts will be. So there's a sense of gambling when future trading, because clubs are essentially betting on where they and their rivals will finish on the ladder in any given year.

'Moving up the board'

With live trading available, if a club is concerned a player they want to draft will be snapped up before their pick, they can 'move up the board' by doing a trade.

For example, in 2024, Adelaide had pick 11 but believed a rival would take West Australian talent Daniel Curtin before their pick. So they did a deal with GWS, trading picks 11, 15 and a future second-rounder in exchange for picks 8 and 17, ensuring they got Curtin with pick 8. The Giants then did a pick swap of their own with St Kilda to move up the board to get James Leake, which shifted Adelaide's future second-rounder to the Saints.

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